On February 5, the news appeared on all leading e -sports sites that Samsung Closes World Cyber Games – Your main brainchild in the field of computer sports. According to the Director General of WCG Incorporated Brad Lee , In 2014, Samsung is not going to work in this direction, therefore, there will be no and Grand finals. The WCG committee decided so, assessing the current situation and estimating where the wind blows.
And he blows briefly, that's where. Once WCG was one of the most prestigious competitions where the best players of the planet sought. Now most of serious disciplines have their own tournaments and leagues, with a much large scope and prizes. Competitions like Dreamhack and MLG occupied their niches, and WCG continued to claim the "best of the best". And, alas, it is already in vain: for example, on WCG 2013 in the discipline of League of Legends, most of the slots occupied second -rate teams, since the rest were busy in the “registered” gaming leagues.
► last year's WCG Grand Finals Championship in Chinese Kunshan.
Nevertheless, the news made a depressing impression on many, because World Cyber Games was not just a championship, but a real e -sports Olympics, with a long history, their heroes and glorified teams. He even has his own anthem ( Beyond the Game ) there was. What other computer games championship boast of such a heritage?
Most experts agree that e -sports was born in 1997, when thousands of players were hooked on the United States Quake. In the same year, the first professional league of e -sportsmen was also created in America CPL ( Cyberathlete Professional League ), ahead WCG For three years. In the CIS on the existence of the overseas CPL, then almost no one knew, and the first profile site in our area opened only in 2001 – it was Cyberfight.ru , By the way, still alive.
► We really will no longer hear this anthem in e -sports tournaments?
But we learned about the rapidly gaining weight of World Cyber Games. And if in 2000 on a trial WCG Challenge There were no CIS representatives (and the seventeen countries participated in total), then a year later, 50,000 dollars in three disciplines were played on Russian national qualifying ( Quake III Duel, Quake III TDM And Counter-STRIKE). Since that time, all actively competing domestic players have simply “fell ill” of World Cyber Games.
Samsung championship was just brutally popular in the first five to seven years. A halo of legendary and prestige immediately appeared around him. These are now leading teams like Na’vi , Virtus.Pro or Team Empire They can afford to send compositions to anywhere in the globe thanks to sponsorship support, and then win a fully paid trip to South Korea, without exaggeration, a real dream! By the way, she seemed to many.
► The Lenty program about World Cyber Games 2002
In fact, all the CIS cybersterators then lived “from WCG to WCG” – it was this tournament that summed up the results of the season and opened a new. Everything was just like in traditional sports: everyone tried to make the peak of his game form to the beginning of national qualifying. It doesn’t matter how your team spoke before – if she won the slot on WCG Grand Finals , All the defeats said goodbye to her. In many interviews, the players directly said that they returned only for the sake of participation in World Cyber Games.
2001-2006 – the time of formation and rapid development of the championship. In 2001, 430 players from thirty-three countries of the world arrived in Seoul, and in 2006 there were already 700 out of sixty-eight countries in the Italian Monza. In 2006-2010, the numbers were already slightly changed, but the Grand finals themselves were at a very high level. Perhaps this five-year plan was the “golden era” of World Cyber Games, and the last “real” WCG is considered to be the 2010 tournament in Los Angeles.
► Alan Enileev carries an Olympic flag at the opening of the Winter Olympics, and a couple of years ago he won WCG by NEED For Speed.
I received very different grades WCG 2011 Grand Finals In the South Korean Busan. On the one hand, that year at the cyberlympiad debuted Starcraft 2: Wings of Liberty, And this has created the desired excitement. On the other hand, the tournament in Counter-Strike 1.6 Then there was already little in common with the legendary tournaments of past years. The difference between the level of the game of the participating teams was colossal-any expert on the move would guess not only the finalists, but all the quarter-finalists. Boring and predictable.
Many naively believed that after the United States and South Korea WCG He will return to Europe again (as it was already in 2006 and 2008), but the organizational committee had its own plans. The tournament crossed the East Chinese Sea and unexpectedly for everyone was moored in Kunshan-the Chinese city is far from the first size. If in Pusan the organizers scored into the coffin World Cyber Games Only a couple of nails, then the rest added to them in Kunshan. To do this, it was necessary to linger in the Celestial Empire for two years ..
► World finals of 2004 in San Francisco.
To our surprise, for some game journalists of the CIS (and not only journalists), the news about the closure of WCG thundered like a thunder among a clear sky. Although the "patient" has been seriously ill for several years. Was it possible to save him? Yes, but this required radical measures and serious surgery. It is unfortunate that the owners of the once popular brand forgot the saying "to break – not to build".
Below we will talk about key mistakes and strategic shortcomings of the organizers World Cyber Games , committed over the past years. We do not claim the truth in the last instance, but this is our opinion.
Format
Like the traditional Olympiad, WCG was a competition of national teams, that is, it was attended by groups equipped with players from one country. This format was successful and interesting, but now it is already outdated. If at the dawn of the two thousandths there was far from a high -quality Internet everywhere, allowing you to play with teams from other countries, then after a few years it changed and, like mushrooms after the rain, international teams began to arise.
► DOTA2-compound fnatic-players from Denmark, Germany, Finland, Sweden and Israel.
These processes have been especially accelerated in the last three to four years-now in Dota 2, League of Legends And World of Tanks A lot of international teams. And almost all of them are on the leading roles, as they are collected from the best players of their countries. Take the same Fnatic According to Dota 2 – the team has been holding on for more than two years, and representatives of the five states have played for it. Naturally, the audience would like to see Fnatic on WCG – but the “national” rule prohibits the participation of such a team as dozens of others.
It turns out the organizers WCG They simply did not follow modern realities and from the vanguard of computer sports for thirteen years they moved to the tail. In the past couple of years, the following trend has been outlined: the best players of their countries gathered in one cheerful hodgepodge, which went to China or South Korea to take a walk and have fun. Of course, such a team did not set any serious goals – “we played together three days before departure, we will play as it trample”. And these are not isolated cases.
► The organizers say https://tropicanza-casino.co.uk/ goodbye to Warsraft 3, and in a few months they will say goodbye to the World Cyber Games itself.
You could close your eyes for this if it were not for the audience. The latter needs the participation of all the strongest teams that will certainly jump out of themselves for the sake of victory, since this tournament bears the prestigious title of cyberlympiability. Otherwise, they will better go to look at others, the benefit of the lack of e -sports events is not now. Actually, this is how it happened – interest in the championship was inexorably falling every year, did not save and League of Legends With Starcraft 2.
Lighting
In the middle of the two thousandths to be imbued with the atmosphere of grand finals WCG it was possible with the help of several very dubious quality of the videos on YouTube. People's craftsmen from the gaming community made muviks about the performance of a particular team at a particular championship. There were still demos of matches and thousands of photos. The latter, as a rule, is almost nobody needed – looked at the few most colorful and closed the gallery. Then it seemed to us that this was enough.
► Visitors are convenient to watch, but there are no audience for their screens. Such was the World Cyber Games Olympiad.
But today this is already not enough. Streaming broadcasts and sites like Twitch.TV. High -quality coverage of the online tournament is now almost the main guarantee of its success. The organizers understand this very well Intel Extreme Masters , The International and other large championships (some of them have already created their own studios), but the official WCG streams stuck in the past. Not only did the inhabitants of the Western world watch these streams because of the difference in time, so the quality also lame.
It seems that the WCG Organizational Committee considered it more priority to work with television channels of different countries. On many channels in news releases there really were two -minute stories about World Cyber Games – But is there a target audience of e -sports championships? Hmm, well, at least the parents of the players learned that, it turns out, large games in the games really exist, these are not children's inventions. It would be better to make a full -fledged program or show, honestly.
Disciplines
For thirteen years, the official disciplines of WCG managed to visit approximately sixty games – computer, console and even mobile. At the dawn of the two thousandth Grand Finals, they mainly relied on hardcore, really e-sports games, but over time, politics changed. Gradually began to appear "visible" games like Red Stone, Lost Saga or Asphalt, not related to computer sports. The tournament earned, and the audience was disappointed.
► Even Guitar Hero was once an official WCG discipline.
From time to time, embarrassment occurred with basic disciplines. In 2004 Counter-Strike 1.6 Replaced with Counter-Strike: Condition Zero, And in 2005-on Counter-Strike: Source. And if the Condition Zero almost did not differ from the classics (unless the models and the fact that it was possible to raise grenades), then Source is a completely different game. It was only popular in the United States, and later it became clear to everyone that it could not be forced out the old version. In 2006, Counter-Strike 1.6 returned.
And why did they support for so long Warsraft 3: The Frozen Throne? Okay, the championship was still held in 2011 (although it was already clear then that the discipline was doomed), but why was to keep the game for WCG for another two years? In 2013, it was already more like show matches. We are not at all against this game as such, but how many years you can keep it in the list of disciplines and at the same time ignore the more popular Counter-Strike: Global Offensive?
Status
All this painfully beat the status of the cyberlympies, and yet almost no one refused to travel to the Grand Finals until 2011, because the players got the opportunity to walk along the streets of Los Angeles, Seattle, Cologne, Singapore or Seoul. The situation changed in 2012, when WCG sheltered a provincial Chinese Kunshan – There were no special attractions there, and cybersece were not very happy with such a prospect.
► Dmitry Kostin (Happy) – the most titled Russian player in Warsraft 3 and Starcraft 2.
In 2012, Russian DOTA2 teams refused to participate in the WCG Grand Final Moscow Five And Garaj Gaming , And also Dmitry Kostin (Happy) – player in Starcraft 2. Doters argued the refusal of personal problems and the absence of visas, and the player Team Empire wrote in a team blog: “WCG over the past couple of years (and I have been on WCG four times) shows only regression in every sense – starting with the fact that the tournament has turned from a top -end e -sports championship for professionals (and not fans who are currently participating in 95% or more) to the advertising platform, and ending with the fact that the prize decrease from year to year and the quality of the conduct is reduced ".
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A year after this entry, the WCG Organizational Committee will report the closure of the championship. What had to be done to save the championship and make it more popular?
First, to abandon the "national" rule, because it has outlived itself.
Secondly, to make an e-sports federation like Olympic committee , which would establish close cooperation with Valve , Blizzard , Wargaming , Riot Games , Ubisoft and other companies present in e -sports.
Thirdly, to form a logical pool of disciplines and entrust the aforementioned companies tournaments in their games within the framework of one large World Cyber Games.
Fourthly, allow all participating teams and players to wear their uniform in the tournament, even if it depicts the logos of other sponsors.
Fifth, choose a place of WCG Grand Finals Large and famous cities, as in the first years of the existence of cyberlympiades.
And finally, make a high -quality official stream.
► The main scenes of the five different World Cyber Games.
It still seems to us that WCG only took a break and will soon be revived. Maybe, Samsung In the future, he will revise his plans and grind out the mossy foundations, perhaps to sell the brand to someone else … But in any case, we can’t believe that this is really the end of such a glorious championship with a long history. Well, or I don't want to believe.